Norway is reeling after 151 incidents of alleged rape and sexual assault were discovered in a community near Lapland.

Police launched the investigation after the Verdens Gang (VG) newspaper published accounts from 11 men and women detailing the alleged abuse, which dates as far back as 1953.

A new police report identified 82 victims, ages between 4 and 75, and 92 suspects, including three women, the AFP news agency reported. Some people involved were both suspects and victims.

Police said two people have been charged with 10 assaults so far, and more charges could follow.

The incidents occurred in Tysfjord, a municipality in far north Norway with a population under 2,000. About 70% of the victims and suspects are part of the Sami indigenous community, who have lived in parts of the Arctic in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia for thousands of years. Many of the victims and accused are followers of Laestadianism, a conservative Lutheran revival movement that began in northern Scandinavia in the 19th century, AFP reported.

The police report said more than 100 of the 151 cases, which include 43 rapes — including three incidents of child rape — were dropped, primarily because of the statute of limitations, AFP said.

"The police have no reason to believe that ethnicity or religious beliefs are an explanation to the assaults that took place," but certain "mechanisms" in the community "have made it difficult for things to emerge,” police officer Tone Vangen told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.

She said some of the victims had turned to religion instead of to the authorities. Vangen apologized for the police’s failure to take action after several assaults were reported.

Lars Magne Andreassen, director of a Sami cultural center in Tysfjord, told AFP: "It's painful to note that there have been so many cases over so many years ... and serious for some."

He also expressed "pride over society daring to break the silence," AFP said.

"In the Tysfjord case, silence of the victims was met with a similar silence from the authorities," he added.

"It's not so much the fact that the Sami have a cultural problem which we should clean up but the fact that no one has listened to them."